Courageous Spiritual Fathers vs Cowards Who Tuck & Run
Courageous Spiritual Fathers vs Cowards Who Tuck & Run
By Benham Brothers
If you’re a father sitting around the campfire with your family and you tuck tail and run when a wolf shows up, you’re not acting like a father – you’re acting like a coward.
Last week, the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, tucked tail and ran when asked by GQ magazine if gay sex is sinful. The senior bishop of the Church of England “copped out” (in his own words), saying it was a question he “couldn’t give a straight answer to.”
That’s unfortunate.
He was clearly embarrassed by the question and waffled through the rest of the interview, even giving what seemed to be an approving nod toward homosexual relationships.
By the end of his “cop-out,” truth was nowhere to be found.
A.W. Tozer once said, “When we become so tolerant that we lead people into mental fog and spiritual darkness, we are not acting like Christians – we are acting like cowards.”
Unfortunately today, many priests – and even pastors – are just like the archbishop. They act more cowardly than fatherly as a wolf of sexual confusion robs, kills and destroys those under their care.
These guys may be able to teach, but they’re not being fathers with a willingness to step up and lose their lives (or reputations) for the sake of their sheep.
The Apostle Paul said, “Even if you had ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel” (1 Corinthians 4:15).
We love how Matthew Henry put it: “There commonly is, and always ought to be, an endeared affection between faithful ministers and those they beget in Christ Jesus through the gospel. They should love like parents and children.”
Today, if you want to be considered a spiritual father in the church then you should act like one by loving your children with truth spoken in love.
But cowardly leaders aren’t anything new to the church. At a time of moral perversion and spiritual apostasy in Israel the prophet Ezekiel prophesied: “Her priests have done violence to My law and have profaned My holy things; they have made no distinction between the holy and the profane, and they have not taught the difference between the unclean and the clean; and they hide their eyes from My sabbaths, and I am profaned among them” (Ezekiel 22:17).
What a relevant passage for today’s spiritual leaders.
Matthew Henry elaborated on this, saying: “The priests, who were teachers by office, and had the custody of the sacred things … violated the law of God, which they should have observed and taught others to observe. They made no conscience of the law of the priesthood, but openly broke it, and with contempt … they did what they had in mind, with an express non obstante – notwithstanding to the word of God. By all this God himself was profaned among them; his authority was slighted, his goodness made light of, and the highest affront and contempt imaginable were put upon his holiness.”
It sickens us to hear the archbishop cop out on such a clear teaching of Christ. So as he tucks tail and runs, we pray God raises up new leaders in his place – ones who act more like fathers.